Halloween Haunt opening weekend

[standbyme]

Two of my favorite things in life are Kings Island & Halloween….so Halloween Haunt is heaven for me. (I do prefer FearFest over the new Halloween Haunt name though.) I have been to every Fearfest so far…so I do think I am in a decent position to judge how good this year’s event compares to the older ones. First off let me say that after experiencing it I have come to this conclusion: Cedar Fair is just as good as Paramount for Overselling a new event, just like Boomerang Bay & Italian Job never lived up to the advance billing neither does the new Haunted Halloween. Don’t get me wrong, I had a very good time, but then again I always do at Fearfest. With all the talk of “taking it up a notch” I really had my expectations high…maybe too high. I will say that I saw some very impressive new decorations. The huge skeleton head at the entrance was amazing…and I’m sure not cheap to construct. My favorite new decorations this year were all of the very well made tombstones. The sign department should be very proud of them. But other than that, this year’s event was not much different than any of the years past…sure there may be a LITTLE more blood splattered in some of the haunts, and Club Blood was a LITTLE more daring but overall it was the “same old same old”. I have always felt it is better to UNDERsell something that way when it’s BETTER than people expected they are more happy in the end. (At least I am.) With that said here is a breakdown of my trip, I went Friday, Saturday & Sunday…from opening to close.

We arrived Friday just as the park was about to open…as we were walking up to the entrance it was really cool to see an old park tram filled with skeletons…we always stayed at the campground when it was open so I have very fond memories of riding these back & forth to the park during Fearfest. The usual Phantom cars were also up front as well as the old SOB cars this year.

Walking into the park you are greeted with a very impressive display at the foot of the fountain. I must admit, even though this year’s display was defiantly more elaborate I still prefer last years. There were also the Halloween Haunt hearses sitting there…and since we don’t live in the area it was nice seeing them up close in person. Looking around you could see LOTS of scaracters running around everywhere. There were at least 2 sliders up front…although they don‘t “spark“ like they used to. (Any of you sliders want to answer this for me: How hard is that on the knees?) Most of the scaracters were just in face makeup and an outfit but there were a few full costumed creatures. My favorite guy running around this year was this guy:

The biggest and I do mean BIGGEST disappointment was that Don “The Undertaker” was not on duty either Friday or Saturday night! I had heard that he was coming back this year…so with him not there it was a major disappointment. There was a “host” and I am sure he was giving it his all, and he was not too bad…but he was no where near as good as Don was last year. The big difference between the two in my opinion was that whereas Don seemed to actually be the host of the front of the park, the new guy just seemed to get lost in the crowd. (And no, I do not think I could have even done nearly as good as the “new” guy…so even while I am saying this, I know that this guy is still doing a better job than I could have.)

The crowd tonight was not bad at all…it is true what they say about Fridays…they are better….and be warned, Saturdays are a NIGHTMARE! (Pun intended.) We could have done EVERY haunt/maze/show on Friday if we wanted to, PLUS countless rides… whereas on Saturday it was so much more crowded we could probably only get about the haunts done & a couple of mazes…and that is if we were persistent. The first haunt we chose to do this Friday evening was the new “Club Blood”. There was hardly any line so we only waited about 5 minutes. The outside of the club looked interesting…I always like “good” graffiti. (I am curious, can anyone tell me what the big letters on this fence say? I have tried to figure it out but can‘t.)

I forgot to mention, I do not take too many pictures inside the haunts because I do not want to affect the atmosphere or hurt the scaracters eyes…so when I do take them it is usually without a flash unless I am “alone” in an area. I thought Club Blood was ok…it did have a few “risky” things but overall it was nothing “over the top” like I was lead to believe by the park’s hype…and a few posters on here.

Next we wandered by “Carnevil“…which obviously is just the 3-D Circus under a new name. This haunt was about the same as always…the only minor disappointment is that the polka-dot clown that usually hides against the wall was just dancing around the room, plus the outfit was too short and you could see the person’s white tennis shoes.

As we were walking to each haunt I would try & take as many pictures of the displays along the way.

In this photo I was about to take a long shot of this whole set-up because no one was in the vicinity when these “idiots” had to step in front of the display! (Just kidding.)

After this we went over to the “Tombstone Terror-tory” haunt. This was the haunt that I had high hopes for and couldn’t wait to do. I was also looking forward to seeing if I could pick out “Hauntguy”. Let me say…this haunt was a TOTAL waste. Every person in our group felt the same…I heard several comments near the exit from strangers saying things like “Is that all?”, “That was lame”, “That sucked, etc… On Saturday there was no line late in the evening so we tried it again to see if we just caught it at a bad time…it was EVEN WORSE Saturday! We counted the scaracters throughout the maze…there were 14, and half of them didn’t even attempt to scare anyone. When we made it to the end there was some kind of Cedar Fair exec standing there with a clip-board…he asked me what I thought of it…I said it very polite, but I just told him that we all thought it was just awful. (He seemed a little surprised.) I later found out that all minors have to leave at Midnight…so a lot of the haunts lost quite a few people which might explain our Saturday experience, but we went through it at around 9 o’clock on Friday. I would say this is hands-down the haunt that I would avoid. (Sorry Hauntguy)

Next up we did “Red Beard's Revenge”…which wasn’t bad but seemed like nothing more than “Cowboy Carnage” taken over by pirates. If I had never been to Cowboy Carnage I probably would have rated this one a little higher. The decorations outside were nice.

We were going to go through “Cornstalkers” next but we ended up at the exit and didn‘t feel like going around to the entrance, and since we were near “The Worksite“ we decided to do it. In the past this walkthrough hasn’t really impressed me but this year did. There were a lot of props and quite a few people jumping out plus the fog was good too. Speaking of fog, Friday night was great for fog all over the park, the weather conditions must have been just right for it to stay low and in place. I have not seen it that consistently foggy since the very first Fearfest. (Although it could be just because the weather wasn’t “right” any other time I was there.)

From the Worksite we headed over to “Massacre Manor”. Nothing really new here this year but I will give the actors inside credit, they seemed to be putting their hearts into doing a good job.

After this we headed over to “Trail of Terror” Along the route down to the woods where you would stand in line the park has set up the house from Winterfest and a “ghoul” heckles you as you go by. When we were walking by him he seemed to be having a good time annoying the “taco guy” who DIDN’T appear to be enjoying it. If you go by him make sure you say something, he WILL say something back.The trail wasn’t bad, there certainly was enough stuff to look at. Another good thing about tonight was that we were being sent through in groups…not the endless conga line like in some years past.

From the trail we went over to “Death Row”. I can easily say that this was my favorite haunt this year. I have always liked “Maze Of Madness” anyway, but this year seemed even better. Both of the “hosts” outside seemed to be really enjoying playing in character and interacting with the people in line. Inside the maze the scaracters really did a good job of making sure you didn’t get out real fast by pointing you in the wrong direction. At one point the people in our group got separated and I actually ran into them face to face from the opposite direction from a different pathway. We liked this one so much we did it twice.

After this maze we rode Firehawk and then headed for “The Cemetery”…but since it was almost 1 o’clock it wasn’t that happening, it was almost a “ghost town” (Once again pun intended) We did come back and do this Saturday night…it was better, but still not that much to brag about.

That was pretty much it for Friday night.

Besides being a LOT more crowded, Saturday night was pretty much a rehash of Friday with only one notable event…”Cornstalkers” apparently caught on fire. We were nearby and it smelled like someone was burning leaves…then a fire-truck went by. Cornstalkers was then closed down. Over in Rivertown there were about 4 of the Cornstalkers scaracters hanging out while they were waiting for it to re-open.

When it did re-open we were some of the first to go through and the pavement was all wet and there were some kind of regularly dressed park personnel walking around inside…so it wasn’t a very good haunt…makes me wish we would have made it through the night before.

It was near 1 o’clock again so tonight we finished with a couple of rides on The Beast…so all was good.

We did do Nick-Or-Treat both Saturday & Sunday and it was good…but nothing really worth going into detail on here since MOST people don’t really care about it!

I did take quite a bit of photos...but unfortunately most of the time I was "rushed" so I did not get many that I truly think are great, but here are some more photos to give you an idea of some of the stuff around the park:

http://www.putfile.com/standbyme/images/150482

Also, you might want to go to the park as soon as possible because I saw SEVERAL cases of the displays being vandalized by the public, lots of broken skeletons & missing parts…it was really obvious Sunday. Gotta love the public.

In conclusion let me say that I did think that this years Halloween Haunt was very good…but not quite what level that it was hyped to be. I do not mind if they have an up-charge next year if only because it will keep the crowds in check.

Also, as a side note I think that the park is not taking into consideration that people of all ages enjoy Halloween. To make Halloween Haunt so explicit that they (supposedly) do not want anyone under 13 attending yet Nick-Or Treat is for kids up to maybe 7-8 doesn’t make sense. (No 9-12 year old kid wants to converse with a talking pumpkin or “find” a pumpkin in a stack of pumpkins.) What are the families that have kids aged 9-12 supposed to do? I am sure there are several families that had our problem this year, we have kids ranging from 2 months to 16 years. We travel almost 3 ½ hours to the park…leaving our kids with a babysitter in our hometown is not realistic nor is trusting a “stranger” in Ohio. I still think that Halloween Haunt could have some haunts that are just old fashioned “safe” ones and a few marked for teens/adults only. Kings Island has always been a family park and I hope it tries to stay that way.

[hauntguy]

Sorry you didn't enjoy Tombstone... but you heard right, TT has about 10 minors (18 or younger) and are not only required to leave early, but required to take a 30 minute break. I on the other hand did not get a chance to do any scaring... I was put on the train due to some staffing conflicts all opening weekend. But hopefully this weekend I MAY be back to scaring in my super-cool spot; I even scared the "higher ups" that knew right were I was!

Also think of the capactiy nightmare we are having... every 10 minutes 400 people show up to tour TT!!! To give everyone a chance to go through we send LARGE groups (sometimes 15 people or more) every 20-30 seconds! This leaves alot of room for one group to catch-up with the other groups... forming the dreaded "conga line". This totally kills every scare in the haunt!

Is something scary if you already seen what's ahead? I don't think so, hopefully we'll have this problem fixed by Fri.

I hope if you decide to do TT again, it would be much scarier! -Hauntguy

[Gordon Bombay]

Great TR standbyme, sorry we walked in front of you You should've introduced yourself and said hi and asked me about my harmonica! Where did you hear minors have to leave by midnight? I dont think thats true, I know in the rides department that rule is not required and if local communities do have curfews for minors they are not enforced on kids traveling to and from work.

[standbyme]

Where did you hear minors have to leave by midnight?

When we went through Tombstone Terror-tory Saturday night it wasn't much after Midnight. The person who started you off into the haunt in groups was not a costumed host but a park exec. I joked with him and said "Didn't your costume show up on time?" and he said "We just had to let all the minors go home so I had to fill in". He didn't actually say Midnight but I just assumed that since he said they just let them go and it wasn't too much after Midnight that that's what he meant.

P.S. I added more photos to my link in the first post.

[Jasper]

Nice trip reprt. I also love your photos.

[Dvo]

In regards to Tombstone Territory...

Why don't they flip it around, so that the guests start from Rivertown and go back INTO the woods, and then take the train back? That way they could easily eliminate the "conga line" as Hauntguy put it, and in the worst case, guests would have to wait 10 minutes for a train, which they do anyway...